PLANK
Yes, PLANK was the Wordle answer on May 17, 2023 (Wordle #697).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈplæŋk/[ˈpʰlæŋk]/ˈplaŋk/
- Noun
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A long, broad and thick piece of timber, as opposed to a board which is less thick.
- Noun
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A political issue that is of concern to a faction or a party of the people and the political position that is taken on that issue.
“Germanization was a central plank of German conservative thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
- Verb
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To cover something with planking.
“to plank a floor or a ship”
- Verb
-
To bake (fish, etc.) on a piece of cedar lumber.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English plank, planke, borrowed from Old French planke, Old Northern French planque (compare French planche, from Old French planche), from Vulgar Latin planca, from palanca, from Latin phalanga. The Latin term derives from the Ancient Greek φάλαγξ (phálanx), so it is thus a doublet of phalange and phalanx. Compare also the doublets planch, planche, and plancha, borrowed later from Middle French, Modern French, and Spanish, respectively.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it PLANGK.
Rhymes with THANK FRANK BLANK DRANK PRANK
Related meanings
In a sentence
I'm as thick as a plank.
Tom is as thick as a plank.
Use PLANK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: May 17, 2023 (#697).
See the full page for that puzzle: May 17, 2023 (#697).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →PLANK in Connections
3 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1024
Reveal this appearance's category
PLANK appeared in PARTS OF A PIRATE SHIP (green group).
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· Puzzle #510
Reveal this appearance's category
PLANK appeared in CORE EXERCISES (blue group).
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· Puzzle #63
Reveal this appearance's category
PLANK appeared in GYM EXERCISES (blue group).
How PLANK performs as a guess
PLANK is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 76.3% of games, misses completely in 23.7%, and leaves about 213 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,227 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 guesses in games solved within six turns.
Try your feedback pattern
Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PLANK used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PLANK performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches PLANK in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PLANK can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PLANK; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PLANK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PLANK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PLANK:
Research on PLANK
Game-tree analysis and word research for PLANK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PLANK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,850 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,090 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, because the two figures score different answer lists.
These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- PLANK sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 87 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).